October 21, 2019
Hiroshima University faculty and students visit ECU
Students from Hiroshima University and East Carolina University learn from each other during Dr. Bethany McKissick’s class.
Five faculty members and four graduate students from Hiroshima University in Japan visited East Carolina University in September.
Colleagues from Hiroshima University visit ECU every year as part of the two universities’ global partnership.
While in Pitt County, the visiting faculty and students visited schools in Pitt County, including Elmhurst Elementary School, Eppes Middle School, and Wahl-Coates Elementary School. One of the faculty members, Professor Tomoyuki Kobara, taught students about what young people in Japan went through in Hiroshima during the atomic bombing in 1945. News coverage of the lesson can be found here.
The visitors were also able to tour parts of ECU’s campus and take part in a special education class taught by the College of Education’s Dr. Bethany McKissick. On their last day in Greenville, they toured the ECU Community School and heard a presentation from the school’s principal, Tracy Cole.
These visits are crucial for our visitors as well as ECU faculty and students.
One of the students from Hiroshima University discusses theme with students at ECU’s Community School.
“As we work with pre-service and in-service educators throughout the region and state, we feel it is vital for us to develop the cultural competence of those educators, so that they may prepare their students for the global marketplace,” said Dr. Allen Guidry, assistant dean for planning and global engagement in the College of Education.
“By providing experiences to engage with students and faculty from universities around the world, we are providing these educators with an opportunity to both reflect on their own lived experience and value structures and to seek commonality with and celebrate the differences of others abroad. This is how we tear down the barriers of misunderstanding and build bridges of awareness that open up a world of possibility.”